Pitted olives stuffed with edible fillings of various kinds are popular delicacies. Edible fillings commonly stuffed into pitted olives include foodstuffs such as vegetable pieces (e.g., pimentos, garlic cloves, onions, artichokes, sun-dried tomatoes), nut meats (e.g., almonds or almond pieces), cheese and cheese mixtures, and meat pastes. Olive stuffing is often done manually, but this procedure has numerous drawbacks. It can be tedious and inefficient work, as each olive must be stuffed individually. It requires a certain degree of manual dexterity. It can be messy work as well, especially when the olives are being stuffed with a soft filling material such as a cheese mixture or meat paste. Furthermore, it can be unsanitary and unhealthy if the persons stuffing the olives do not take adequate precautions against contamination of the olives arid filling materials. take adequate precautions against contamination of the olives and filling materials.
The prior art illustrates numerous examples of apparatus and methods for stuffing olives. U.S. Pat. No. 2,609,853, to L. H. Smith issued on Sep. 9, 1952, discloses a machine directed in particular to stuffing olives with pieces of pimento. U.S. Pat. No. 3,772,982, issued to W. W. Smith on Nov. 20, 1973, respectively, discloses apparatus for slicing freeze-dried pimiento and then stuffing olives with the pimiento slices. U.S. Pat. No. 4,102,257, issued to Gonzalez on Jul. 25, 1978, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,176,070, issued to Marco on Jan. 5, 1993, disclose further examples of prior art olive-stuffing apparatus.
All of these prior art devices are characterized by considerable mechanical complexity and many moving parts, which makes them costly to manufacture, and susceptible to wear and breakdown, than simpler apparatus might be. A further drawback to these prior art devices is that each is generally suited to stuffing olives with only one type of filling material. For instance, the Marco device is specifically directed to stuffing olives with a meat paste, and may be functional to some degree for other paste-like filling materials, but quite clearly would not be suitable, satisfactorily if at all, for stuffing olives with pieces of pimiento or other vegetables. Similarly, it may be readily observed that although the L. H. Smith device may be functional for stuffing olives with pieces of pimiento, it is unsuitable for stuffing olives with a paste-like filling.
For the foregoing reasons, there is a need for an apparatus and method of stuffing pitted olives with an edible filling:                (a) such that manual contact and handling of the olives and filling material is minimized or eliminated, thus minimizing the messiness and maximizing the cleanliness of the olive-stuffing operation;        (b) with apparatus of minimal mechanical complexity; and        (c) with apparatus suitable for stuffing olives with a variety of filling types.        